


Being Outed

by Mathais



Series: Coming Out [2]
Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers Turbo
Genre: M/M, minor torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:57:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3792316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mathais/pseuds/Mathais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Justin revealed one secret to his friends, but he only wishes that he could reveal his other on his own terms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Outed

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters/elements of Power Rangers. They belong to Saban.
> 
> Notes: This takes place in the same universe as [Coming Out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/407976), but it only obliquely references it.

Okay, maybe the cuffs were starting to chafe a little, Fred admitted to himself as he rolled his head around.

Time didn't mean much without windows to see outside, but his arms weren't too bad, so it didn't feel like he was out for too long.

He shook his wrists a little bit and only reconfirmed that they were solidly bound in metal coated with something slimy that Fred couldn't contort himself to see. Not that he really wanted to be free from them. He eyed the ten foot minimum drop beneath him. Yeah, no, he liked his limbs unbroken, thank you very much.

Still, Fred was getting bored. He cycled through confusion, panic, and fear when he first woke up, and now all that remained was a desire to know what was up.

Where was the villain? The evil gloating? As a hostage to a probable supervillain (maybe just a regular villain? It was more likely he caught the eye of some normal monster in some convoluted plot that the Power Rangers would be dismantling soon), Fred felt kind of cheated.

When the door to the warehouse opened, Fred called out, "Took you long enough! I've been waiting!"

"Waiting?" came an oh so familiar voice, and Fred's next taunt froze in his throat. "Oh, don't talk to me about waiting, you silly boy."

The figure who strode in featured in many of his nightmares, the likes of which were only ever eclipsed by Astronema's final attack on Angel Grove.

Oh, fuck no.

"Do you know what I missed on that stupid comet? Ebola! The 9/11 attacks! The release of the Twilight movies!"

"Ivan Ooze," Fred hissed.

"Well, I hope you remember me," he sniffed. "We had so much fun together!"

Fred couldn't respond. All words stuck in his throat, unable to emerge.

This was Ivan Ooze, Ivan fucking Ooze. The boogeyman of his childhood, the devil who'd stolen away his dad and nearly killed him just because he was a loose end. The monster against which he'd desperately rallied the other kids to save their parents, burying all of his fear and pushing forward and nearly failing anyway.

"That face, that face! That's exactly was I was looking forward to!" Ivan Ooze laughed.

"So I take it you don't like me?" Fred finally forced out.

"Don't like you? Don't _like_ you? I _despise_ you!" he spat. "You took my last victory from me! Of course I despise you. And, hey, if messing you up will draw out those Power Punks, then all the more fun for me." Ivan Ooze grinned. It wasn't pretty. "So you know what you can do for me? _Fry._ "

Fred screamed. Lightning scorched his body, setting every nerve on fire. He kicked and thrashed and the world faded away as the pain came and came and came and fuck, everything hurt, when would it stop, why, why, why? He screamed until his throat was raw and tears were streaming down his eyes.

When he was finally granted reprieve, Fred slumped forward and sobbed. Just because the lightning stopped didn't mean that the pain did, and his body jerked spastically from tremors.

"Oho, you respond so beautifully!" Ivan Ooze smiled again. "Maybe we could have another round?"

Fred wasn't built strong enough for this. He wanted to grit his teeth, he wanted to give some flippant remark, but he couldn't. He couldn't even muster the strength to raise his head.

"Fry!"

Fred flinched. When the pain didn't come again, he dared to open his eyes.

Ivan Ooze wasn't alone anymore. There was a figure in blue blazing a path forward, punches and kicks flying. Under Fred's blurred gaze, the Ranger drew a sword and began to swing it in deadly arcs. Ivan Ooze responded by forming a similar weapon out of his ooze and meeting him blow for blow.

Fred was sort of confused. As he clawed back to a fragment of coherency, he realized that he recognized this Ranger. It'd been... years since the Blue Turbo Ranger had appeared, hadn't it? His debut had been after Ivan Ooze too, so why was he dealing with him? Then again, the Ranger coalition that'd sprung up recently seemed to be relatively active, and he swore he'd seen this Ranger on the television at some point, but the Rangers always showed up in teams, even if the teams themselves were mishmashed together.

Slowly, his hearing came back to him in pieces and jumbles. With that, he could hear Ivan Ooze's taunts and the way that the Blue Turbo Ranger didn't respond.

That was... Kind of weird. He vaguely remembered the Blue Turbo Ranger described as being kind of playful when he fought.

This was rather different.

"So, which one are you?" Ivan Ooze taunted. "You're probably not Pink or Yellow. You don't fight like Blue did." He slashed with his sword one-handed, which Blue Turbo parried, only to be left open to the stream of lightning his other hand launched. Blue Turbo contorted awkwardly to avoid it, setting him up for Ivan Ooze's next strike that drew sparks across his body. "You're not good enough for White or Red, and you're not fluid enough for Black. So, who are you?"

"I'm pissed off," Blue Turbo snarled, and Fred could hear it in his voice, all cold anger that was... naggingly familiar. Blue Turbo then blurred forward and savagely twisted their swords into a lock. Ivan Ooze moved to respond, but the Ranger abruptly dropped their ensnared weapons and drew two hand cannons. Twin bursts of blue blasted Ivan Ooze clear off his feet. Before he could follow up though, Fred found himself screaming in pain once more.

He felt his arms give a little as he fell as far as he could and the world came back into relative focus. With blurred eyes, he watched as the Blue Ranger knelt to Ivan Ooze, weapons discarded and hands shackled behind him by hardened purple ooze.

"—yes, that's it. Good boy." Dazed as he was, Fred could not mistake the sheer glee in Ivan Ooze's voice. "It feels oh so good to have one of you kneeling at my feet."

"Fuck you," the Ranger growled.

"Aht, aht, aht." Ivan Ooze wagged one clawed finger, voice chiding. "As amusing as it is to hear your defiance, you need to mind your manners, _boy_. Otherwise..." That very same finger shined bright purple, and Fred whimpered as a jolt raced through his body, not enough to hurt but filled with _promise_. The Blue Ranger abruptly stilled.

"I understand."

"Good." Ivan Ooze began to smile once more. "Now, I have some questions for you, Ranger."

Blue Turbo's helmet, featureless as it was, was still cocked in clearly telegraphed defiance. "What?"

Fred flinched as another jolt went through him. Blue Turbo clearly made an aborted move to turn toward him, so he closed his eyes. He didn't want to see the Ranger sag in defeat, and even barely clinging onto coherency as he was, he could hear the resignation in that echoing, masked voice. It made him hate himself all the more.

"What do you wish to ask of me, sir?"

"At first, I wanted to ask you if you knew where the others were, but..." Fred could hear the odd combination of clack and squish that came from Ivan Ooze's nail tapping against his skin. "I think I want to see your face. The beautiful expressions you'd make. Yes, that'd be perfect. Your body language is all too readable, but you, your _face_ , that would be so exquisite." There was a bit of shifting from the Ranger. "Ah, I'm not stupid. There's no way that I've going to give you free hands to take your helmet off. Demorph, _now_."

Another insult to his savior then. Another thing to add onto Fred's list. He was only forced out of his self-recriminations by another jolt through him, this one enough to elicit a pained whimper.

And this time, defeat colored the Ranger's tone as he whispered, "Fine."

Fred listened to the shatter of light but refused to open his eyes. He'd give this Ranger, who'd so far guarded his identity, this much at least.

"You're a young one. Not as young as they were, but..." He heard the snickt of a drawn blade and a quickly hissed breath. "I wonder if you'll scream like this one."

Fred braced himself, but the awful gasp that left the Ranger's mouth was all too familiar. His eyes snapped open at the same time as his heart dropped.

Because, no. No, no, no, no, no. That wasn't Justin on the ground before him, writhing in pain from the same lightning used on him. There was no way that Justin was here, because Justin was at home, safe, and not a Ranger who Fred now remembered seeing rush into danger just last month. He couldn't help the strangled, panicked growl that emerged from his throat.

Ivan Ooze's eyes snapped instantly to him. Fred knew that he made a mistake. A dark smile crossed this monster's lips as Justin's screams faded into rough hiccups.

"So you two know each other," he said simply. "Well, that's interesting, so very interesting. I wonder how well you two know each other." He nudged Justin's prone body with his foot and shoved him so that he was on his back, hands crushed against the ground.

Fred refused to respond.

"Hmmm, how about this then?" Ivan Ooze's foot rose and fell directly onto Justin's stomach, eliciting another pained choke. Fred's twitch betrayed him, and when Ivan Ooze smiled again, Fred knew whatever small veneer of denial they had was gone.

"Ah, I understand now. You two are like _that_. This is wonderful, wonderful!" Ivan Ooze's laugh rebounded off the walls of the warehouse. "I thought... Well, this makes it so much better then."

Fred didn't want to watch. He didn't want to give this bastard the satisfaction. Whenever he closed his eyes though, whenever he tried to block out Justin's grunts, hisses, and screams, Ivan Ooze would just shock him instead. He could be a martyr about it, but Fred's pain tolerance only lasted so long before he had to open his eyes and see the floor painted with his boyfriend's blood, sweat, and tears.

What hurt the most though was the way Justin wouldn't look at him. He consistently turned his bleeding face away from Fred, his only act of defiance. Fred just wanted to look him in the eyes, to maybe trade a little bit of courage or strength or, or _something_ , whatever was needed to hold on just a little bit longer. It would be a welcome respite from the unholy morass of guilt, horror, despair, and hatred churning in his bowels. But Justin's eyes remained hidden behind those bangs that Fred had told him just yesterday to get cut, and...

And another piece of Fred broke each time.

It only stopped when Justin spat out a mouthful of blood. Ivan Ooze looked down at his fallen foe and then at his all but broken object of hatred. His glee was obvious. He picked up his sword again and poked Justin in the side. "It'd be a shame if you choked on your own blood before I got answers out of you. So, up you go, boy." Justin was prodded onto his knees once more, this time bearing the marks of his torture. Only the knowledge that this monster would do worse kept Fred from averting his eyes.

"Now, brat, I'm only going to ask you this once, but where are the ones who left me on that damn comet?"

Justin slowly raised his head, and Fred's breath caught. There was still fire in his eyes. Through a bloodied mouth, he gurgled, "Look up," and then threw himself backward with surprising speed.

Ivan Ooze only had time to widen his eyes before he was enveloped in a multicolored rainbow.

The place was suddenly swarming with Rangers or so it felt. A green Ranger, one of the newest, slipped down to Justin, while a yellow one levitated up to him and said, "Hey, I'll have you down in a sec."

"You need to dispel the ooze first," another Ranger called, and wow, that was Rose Ortiz, Overdrive Pink, down there. The Yellow Ranger—Mystic Yellow?—acknowledged her with two flashes of light that ended with him finally free from those damn cuffs.

"J'stin?" he slurred.

"We've got him," the Yellow Ranger said.

"O'ze?"

The Yellow Ranger paused. "We've got him," he repeated, tone dark.

Fred slumped a little in the Ranger's arms, head lolling. The desperation that lasted him this long seemed to be fading, and his consciousness flickered.

"Teleport them back to medical," a Red Ranger ordered, and a small part of him went holy shit in recognition. Lightspeed Red was here! The rest of him was already shutting down, too exhausted to batter back the darkness at the edges of his eyes. On seeing Justin bundled carefully up, Fred finally relaxed to a rush of light and warmth and the whisper of, "You're safe now," in his ears.

**OoOoO**

Fred woke to the steady beeping of monitors and the fuzziness he associated with painkillers. His groan rumbled through his chest, but the lack of pain probably meant that Fred was on some of the good stuff.

A blonde woman bustled up to him with a clipboard, and part of him detached from the floatiness to gape. "You're Dana Mitchell, the Pink Lightspeed Ranger."

"Looks like you're lucid," she noted with a smile. "Wonderful! As you guessed, yes, I am Dana Mitchell. I've been overseeing you since you were admitted."

But Fred had another immediate concern that overpowered even the drugs running through him. "Where's Jus—"

She coughed lightly, interrupting him. "We're in the public portion of medical. It's not the right place to discuss names."

Right, right. Fred took in a deep breath and ignored the slight flare behind his eyes. Justin wasn't a public Ranger. Justin hadn't even told him, and they were... "Okay, yeah, sorry."

"It's understandable," she said. "I can tell you that he's all right though. Those kinds of injuries heal fast."

Injuries that healed fast and how many could be hidden, how many did he not notice? Fred bit the inside of his cheek and wished he could still feel pain past the ever-present daze.

"I'm just going to run some questions, but we don't think there are any secondary effects to the lightning Ivan Ooze used," she explained. Dana took him through a generalized run through, which Fred answered as well as he could. When she was done, she smiled. "It looks like things will be all right. We'll keep you under observation for the week, but it seems Ivan Ooze kept the voltage low enough not to do any permanent damage. We haven't detected any internal injures either, though we'll see again tomorrow."

"Thank you."

Dana hesitated briefly before speaking again. "We're unable to reach your current emergency contact." Right, that was Justin, and he wasn't in any position to be here. "We've contacted your father, but he's unable to make it here until tomorrow."

Yeah, that would be the case. His dad was overseeing contract work on site. "Can you tell him that it's all right? I know his project will wrap up at the end of the week."

"Are you sure?"

Fred closed his eyes, feeling tired all over again. "Yeah, I'm sure."

Dana paused and then acquiesced. "I have to continue my rounds, but if you need anyone, we have staff on call, button by your right."

"I understand," he said.

"I—No," Dana shook her head. "This isn't something you should hear from me. Rest well."

"...thank you."

Fred fell back onto his pillow, exhausted. His thoughts were racing, but they slipped further and further out of his reach until he dipped into full slumber. When he next woke, it was to the beat of a heart monitor and the distinctive rumble of snoring that Fred had become very acquainted with over the last few years.

He opened his eyes and peered over to the side. Justin sat curled in on himself, chin pressed down on crossed arms. Now that he could see, however, Fred noticed the bandages that peeked through the long sleeve shirt he wore.

Should he even be out of bed?

But then Dana's words passed through his head once more, and Fred's mouth tightened. Well, it was time to face the music anyway.

Fred reached out, slowly and laboriously. He wasn't quite sure if he could reach, but his fingers just barely brushed Justin's arm. The only reason he could get that far was because Justin had dragged the chair as close to the bed as he could.

Justin jerked awake with an inelegant snort, and Fred would have burst into equally inelegant giggles if he'd been in the mood.

"Fred! You're awake!"

"Mhm, yeah," he croaked out, throat dry. Justin scrambled for the melting ice chips placed close by, carefully feeding him a few. Blessed relief soothed him from his mouth down through his abused throat to rest comfortably in his stomach. By the time Fred opened his eyes again, Justin had laid a trembling hand on his face.

"You're all right," he whispered.

"You too," Fred whispered back. No matter how much his heart stung, he would be forever glad to see Justin alive and kicking.

"...there are a lot of things we need to talk about that we can't here," Justin said quietly.

"Guess not."

"I've been working on giving you the right clearance, but, well, bureaucracy."

Fred reached up and grabbed Justin's hand, just to have that warmth in his own. "I know."

Justin pressed their foreheads together. "I love you, Fred."

The words whispered against his mouth, words that Justin rarely said but were engraved in so many of his acts.

"I love you too."

**OoOoO**

"Fred, what's wrong?"

The next week, after Fred was officially released and finished catching up on what he missed, they sat down together for dinner.

Fred found himself pushing his food around his plate. Their go to meal when they forgot to get groceries, spaghetti, sat in front of him, swimming limp in red sauce and soggy vegetables. He looked up at Justin's words. There was resignation on his face, carefully hidden behind a tired mask, but, well, they'd been boyfriends for years now and friends for even longer.

"It's hard not to feel a little betrayed."

The words came out slowly, almost like pulling teeth and just as difficult, but Fred knew that communication was important. It'd be hypocritical for him to consider otherwise.

From when they were headstrong children introduced to each other by Nico to awkward teenagers dealing with puberty and attraction while being wildly separated in terms of grade level, communication was always an issue. When Justin withdrew into himself as a teenager, well, more than one sparring session had resulted.

Fred had always wanted Justin to talk to him. It was on him to reciprocate.

"It's just... You were—are," Fred corrected himself, " _Blue Turbo_. You became a Ranger before we knew each other. Unless you inherited...?"

"No, no, I'm the first and only. Except for the robot clone."

"...robot clone?"

"Yeah, we had robot clones made of us, but they got different Powers when they went to Eltare."

Fred paused and decided to set it aside for his sanity. "Anyway, it's just that this is a huge secret. You run off with little explanation and then come back without saying much. I rarely know what you get up to at times, and there are all these side projects..." Fred's thoughts derailed. "That, that thing last June, in the middle of the night? That was Ranger business?"

Justin winced and rubbed at his face. "Yeah, there was an equipment malfunction in London that led to—" he cut himself off.

Fred understood. "You can't talk about it?"

"Classified," Justin said softly. "There are some things that I really can't talk about. Ever since the Ranger Coalition went public, we have a lot more formalized policies in place, including who can know what. Identities are one thing, but we've been doing R&D too, and, yeah, there's a mess of issues there."

"And the fact that you're..." Fred trailed off.

"Revealing identifies while not under duress is covered too. You have to have agreement from all members of your team if you have a secret identity." Justin scrubbed at his face. "It was a little more informal before the Coalition, and since I was retired before that..."

"But you're not retired anymore," Fred said, smile brittle.

"...no, I'm not," Justin said after a moment.

Silence stretched before them. Justin's hand twitched as if to reach out, but then it stilled.

"Fred," Justin said carefully, "if, if..."

He knew what Justin was about to say. If something like this had happened before, if someone else had felt what he was feeling now, there'd be fractures.

He knew that some couples hadn't made it.

Fred abruptly stood. Justin flinched, but Fred wasn't walking away. He stepped behind Justin and wrapped his arms around him, resting his chin on top of Justin's head. Neither of them were small guys, but Justin still fit cradled against him like he belonged there. For all of his brave front, Fred could feel the way he trembled.

"I just need time," Fred said. Justin drew in a hitched breath, bangs covering his eyes, but Fred knew him well enough to know the tears rolling down his cheeks. "But know this Justin; I love you. I love you so much. I won't deny that this changes things, but I'm not going to leave."

Justin bit his lip and then reached up to hold his arms. "Please don't leave me, Fred. Please don't leave me. I love you too."

"I'm here, I'm here."

Justin's hands tightened on his arm, and Fred responded by hugging him harder. Things would be difficult from here on out, yes, but they were worth it. Justin was worth it.

Fred believed in that, would believe in that, forever.

**Author's Note:**

> I tossed this idea around for a while and ended up with this. I'd planned more sections that showed Fred adjusting to things, but the words weren't coming, so I decided to share what I had. The rest might come in the future, but I hope you enjoy this bit!


End file.
